Charter for Working Group

The NISI Working Group will explore the requirements for common, sharedInternet-wide network information services. The goal is to develop anunderstanding for what is required to implement an information services``infrastructure'' for the Internet. The work will begin with existingNIC functions and services and should build upon work already beingdone within the Internet community. A primary goal of the group is tofacilitate the development of relationships between NICs that willresult in the presentation of a seamless user support service. NISIwill work with all NICs, including the InterNIC, to achieve the goal ofa fully-functioning, cooperative mesh of worldwide NICs. In additionto creating policies for interaction, NISI will address areas such ascommon information formats, methods of access, user interface, andissues relating to security and privacy of Internet databases.

Milestones

Submit the NIC Interelationship document for consideration as an FYI RFC.

Dec 1993

Submit the NIC-Profiles paper for consideration as an FYI RFC.

Done

Post an Internet-Draft describing NIC interelationships.

Jun 1993

Post an Internet-Draft of a NIC user handoff procedure based on the UCP work.

Done

Post an Internet-Draft describing accessing the nic-profiles data in the X.500 database at Merit.

Done

Write a document explaining the security issues of privacy and accuracy in Internet databases. Publish as an Informational RFC.

Done

First document released as Informational RFC. Outline and discuss new NISI tasks at IETF meeting.

Done

Working group discussed current Internet-Draft and suggested minor revisions. Decision made to continue Working Group activity beyond this document.

Done

Document submitted as Internet-Draft for comment from a wider Internet audience.

Done

Revised draft document ready for working group review. Document defines NIC functions and suggests some standardizations for NIC services, as well as offers new mechanisms for exchanging information between NICs.

Done

Review draft for phase 1 and begin discussions for completing the second phase which is to define a basic set of `cooperative agreements' which will allow NICs to work together more effectively to serve users.